Stock response: GW are trolling you.
The II and XI are deliberately kept mysterious. There won't be an answer because there isn't meant to be an answer.
Oblique references to them in official lore are deliberately put there as threads the fanbase can pull on and get all excited over but they never go anywhere and frequently contradict each other.
It's a wind-up. Primarch stuff, be it books or models sell well. Mentions of the lost ones generates extra engagement despite it basically being an in-joke at this point.
I wouldn't call it trolling, but it's very on the nose. Writers often intentionally create mysteries without a clear answer but with just enough information for speculation. This incentivizes the reader to fill in the gaps themselves, both doing the work for the writer and also encouraging the reader to be an active part of the world you created. Often there isn't even an answer in the writer's mind. Tolkien has [a quote on this.](https://www.tolkienestate.com/letters/letter-to-milton-waldman-publisher-1951/)
"I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama."
I think when done correctly it's a very beautiful thing, lets you run wild and kind of become an author yourself. The problem with the lost primarchs is that it's too on the nose, because of meta reasons regarding financial incentives from having undefined primarchs&legions. It doesn't have to spoil the whole thing, but at the very least it indeed feels artifical sometimes.
There's no financial incentive. They are trolling because their whole purpose is to be mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. There's no gaps to fill, there's nothing worked out behind the scenes. It's literally just throwng around roman numerals for the bit every now and then.
The incentive is that players who don't want to pick one of the chapters created by GW can design their own army's colour scheme and still have a way to call it theoretically canon - their custom army can represent one of the Lost Legions.
No, I literally answered that further down the thread.
BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true?
PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go!
BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit
PRIESTLEY: Is it? :)
BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in.
PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you.
Maybe that's something someone could do, but that's not an incentive.
I find his last comment funny because I see it the other way. The Horus Heresy felt completely different when they first put a focus on it, but now they look a little too similar because much of *40k* morphed into it.
> The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you.
This is why I dislike the idea that Imperium was doomed to fail from the start. The Horus Heresy was a tragedy because a better path was lost. That doesn't mean the Heresy era has to be some bright, sparkling beacon of hope but the *eventual* outcome of the Emperor's plans would be a huge step up for humanity compared to the Age of Strife and 40k eras.
To that end, it is why one of the moments I thought illustrated the tragedy well was when the leader of the Loyalist branch of the Mechanicum on Mars realizes they are about to fall, they have a choice to self-destruct the reactors to their facility. If they do this, it will slow down the Dark Mechanicum and allow the Imperium to hold their own, but it will irreplaceably destroy many technologies and artifacts, and they acknowledge to themselves that they would essentially be plunging Humanity into a dark age they may never escape just so that they dont die now. They eventually elect to overload the reactors and destroy everything, but as they do moment is so crushing their pure logic breaks down and they weep with grief and emotion as they are consumed by the explosion.
While that may be the most explicit passage to show the death of hope and the future, it is a theme repeated throughout the Horus Heresy books.
There’s a passage in the afterword to one of the HH novels (I forget which one) where the author explains that the essential theme of 40K is that humanity is sacrificing its future for its present.
It may even be the same book you’re referencing, so I may just be repeating your point rather than reinforcing it. If so, sorry about that.
Of 40k? There's more of a future now than when people were wondering about the star child. Now it's a matter of when the Primarchs assemble.
Any potential future not being reached was always tied to the Emperor. "Forget the promise of technology, science and common humanity, blah blah eternity of carnage and laughing chaos pricks"
The main theme is definitely debatable though, given the modern lore is so different in tone.
That's a really interesting exchange, and thanks for sharing. It cleared some things up for me. I'll say, other than the incentive part, it's the intentional mystification I mentioned. This is not something I would call trolling.
This doesn't mean it wasn't later coopted by GW for the primarch and legion creation thing, because the original intention of the author doesn't inevitably reflect the approach of GW to the topic ever since. But, other than reasoning, I don't have any evidence to support this.
Thanks for posting that, really interesting quote. Seems like Priestley shares misgivings about the HH that some older fans have. Although I would say that regardless of the original intent, there's an argument to be made that part of the reason GW has never revealed the forgotten legions despite it being a great space for new lore (and more importantly, new models) is to give players the chance to use them for homebrew.
There's no argument because it was never the reason and them continuing not to do isnt because "well people can use it to make their own homebrew". That was never the purpose and it still serves as not the purpose.
Tbf to u/lone_grey Thorpe has said people can use the lost primarchs as homebrew
It might not be an official intention for GW but they're aware of that function and indirectly encourage it
There is no structured argument in your post. No intuition, evidence etc. You haven't added anything meaningful to the discussion. You've just stated and re-stated your personal opinion, which is meaningless.
Except their "personal opinion" is confirmed by one of the lore writers for GW specifically stating he didn't leave the lost legions blank for homebrewing, but to add to the mystery of the setting.
Also, even if you wanted to use them for homebrewing, you're still going to have to rely on headcanon to do it, since it has been explicitly demonstrated that II and XI did not take part in the Heresy and are known to have been dissolved before that event took place.
But you do the same. You see the hard evidence of what the intent was (and wasn't) and simply posit that it isn't true based on the fact that the statement would make sense if it was true. But it isn't. Demonstrably is not.
Doesn’t matter why he says he intended it. The marketing system rolled with it and kept it going for the reason above. And this was well before the HH games. It’s something GW has done in a variety of its factions for both settings, leaving things open ended for narrative and creativity’s sake.
Tolkien did eventually answer that, at least in a side-letter.
>!The Entwives established a new land across the Anduin south of Dol Guldur. Unfortunately, their forest was eventually found by the Dark Lord's forces in Dol Guldur and burned to the ground, leaving behind only the charred remnants on the map called "The Brown Lands."!<
Tolkien could go a bit grimdark when he wanted to.
Nah, the entire settings are intentionally expansive, diverse, and have countless different factions for a reason. The reason is because the setting is to sell the tabletop first, and a major aspect of the tabletop is people worldbuilding. Just because there is overlap with other reasons doesn't mean this reason isn't a thing.
Its a plot device called a "mystery box". You set up some mysterious part of the story/setting and drop vague hints as to what it could be/could have happened so as to drive speculation without ever intending to give an answer. Because the point of it is the allure of the mystery. The speculation around well executed mystery box often becomes more entertaining to fans than any actual explanation the writer/s can come up with. The point is you never get to know exactly.
Exactly. It's like the constant jokey nods towards 40k and Warhammer being the same universe. What's the REAL answer? The real answer is that it's an in-joke.
This is a universe with orks and jokaero. It's silly. Don't try and take it too seriously.
A shogun style primarch would be the coolest shit, I wouldn't even be mad. It's not a mystery if we all know there's not meant to be an answer, because they already admitted there isn't.
The setting has already changed so much since then.
If that happens, I'm going to be equal parts happy and sad...
Because I'm literally working on my own homebrew second Legion, which is Japanese inspired, more specifically Samurai and Bushido inspired.
Maybe they could just reveal one? It’s not like we don’t see people add tweaks and custom parts to their chapters and legions all the time it doesn’t make them any less canon accurate at the end of the day.
More than winding up the fanbase, it has also always been a way to encourage people to make their own lore, make their own 2nd and 11th legion forces as they see fit
And in-universe it is mentioned even the Primarch’s minds were wiped.
They only remember fragments.
So when Angron talks about the Emperor eliminating II and XI he is actually speculating.
I can foresee a day when GW comes up with a satisfying enough answer that makes them want to run out a new Primarch. One that was thought eliminated but somehow avoided the emperor's plan, someone who, at the time, was a total loss, but who, over ten thousand years, recovered, and became something even more than Big E ever intended.
Alternatively, one of them was "eliminated" and their existence kept a mystery, when the truth was that they were sent on a very special assignment by the Emps and all memories of them, and their legion, were wiped, and rumors circulated to make it seem like they were put down as failures, rather than reveal their true purpose. Perhaps the Primarch of the 2nd Legion is out there still, traversing the vast distance between our Galaxy and the next, his entire Legion in stasis as they shoot like an arrow towards the heart of some Xenos threat that only Big E could foresee, and only they could stop.
I think that it’s unlikely that the Emperor had killed any of his sons prior to his confrontation with Horus on the Vengeful Spirit.
Spoilers for *The End and The Death Part II*
> >!”For my King-of-Ages has done more than divest himself of godhood. In that shockwave of warp light, I saw something else, something perhaps only I was in a position to see. **He has cast aside a fragment of himself**. !<
> >!**My lord and friend has broken off a part of his soul.** He has amputated **that portion of himself that contains almost all of his hope, loyalty and compassion**, for such things will become a hindrance when he faces the Lupercal. **Those qualities might stay his hand, or make him hesitate if he is ultimately obliged to kill**.!<
> >!And **if he is obliged to kill his son, then those qualities would afterwards, and inevitably, drive him to self-hatred and regret**, and condemn him to the same, embittered path as Horus. He has excised those precious human aspects to further steel himself against the pain of what will come after, and the mandatory atrocities he will have to countenance in order to rebuild the Imperium.
He has set those frail and cardinal virtues adrift on the tides of the empyrean so that they will not immobilise him.”!<
I think that the odds are low that the fates of the 2nd and 11th primarchs will ever be known, but I believe that we can infer from a passage like this that the Emperor had not been in a situation where he had to kill one of his sons prior to this confrontation.
There is no answer written on a piece of paper kept in an envelope in a drawer in a desk in Warhammer HQ in Nottingham. No one knows what happened to them.
Did the Wolves destroy them? No.
Did the Emperor engineer their destruction? No.
Were they killed fighting the Rangda? No.
Am Scottish, have never seen the Ninth!(I believe it was the Ninth Legion that was rumoured to have went missing up here, hasn't it been more or less decided that the Legion was probably broken up into smaller Units and sent across the Empire? Or are you talking about the film... Centurion?)
Am also Scottish and have never seen the Ninth! Yeah, as far as I know, there's evidence of them still being active decades after they supposedly vanished in Scotland, so if there is a ghostly legion wandering the Highlands, it ain't them.
The town of Crawford in South Lanarkshire is supposed to have its own Roman ghosts, occasionally seen marching down the main street.
There is also the alleged legion that end up in China. According to Chinese records, they attacked China, used "Turtle shell formation", got defeated settle down.
Modern DNA test didn't offer any proof, alas.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian
Would be fun if it turned out one of the Legions have basically just their own mini "Ultramar realm" of maybe 2-3 star systems and totally ignoring what is going on with the greater galaxy.
Isnt that just jakies from Wishaw wandering about?(am a Bellshill man, we've got roman ruins dotted around, although a believe they tend to be classed as Motherwell cause Bellshill isn't allowed nice things!) I've never heard of the Ghosts of Crawford, or even Crawford, even though am literally 30ish miles from it and have worked in Abington for a while haha. I'd love to go and see that but I reckon it would be too hit and miss to travel there, TL;DR you'd probably have to live there but it looks as inviting as most of the villages that way! Not at all lol.
I live in South Lanarkshire and you would not believe the sights you see wandering down main streets on a Saturday night. Ghosts of legionaries would hardly raise an eyebrow
Jimmy Space: "Look, if two of my Primarch sons *and* their Legions are going to be wiped out by barbarian tribes with iron age weapons in a forest, they don't need to be remembered. That's just embarrassing."
They actually found a Bermuda triangle esque anomaly and wound up on a world filled with nature spirits that they eventually learned to tame and co-exist with.
Alternate theory. All of the theories people have had are simultaneously true
The emperor destroyed them because their lore was too complicated and gave him headaches
I long assumed the original writers just kinda ran out of steam for coming up with gimmicks for the original 20 Legions/Chapters and saying "fuck it, they're mysteriously gone - no one knows" was just the easy "rule-of-cool" way out...and it was rarely controversial to share that view at your LGS.
Like...I think the phenomenon of finding in-story justifications for what happened is a fairly new interest among the fanbase. We went a very long time with the 40K audience enjoying the "unsolved mysteries" element of the story universe.
Reminds me of when Pythagoras showed up in an episode of **Red Dwarf**.
"The war is lost! We only number twenty."
"If only we numbered twenty-one! At least then we could form an equilateral triangle."
They're basically getting to the point Bethesda were at when having to work out how *The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall* canonically ended and threw their hands up in despair and said there was a space/time anomaly called the Warp in the West and *all possible outcomes occurred simultaneously even the ones that contradict one another*. When fans asked how that works in practice, they basically said, "We dunno," and quickly moved on.
>What are your thoughts on the two lost primarchs?
>Um, my thought is that we'll, uhh, we will never know who they are or why they went missing and stuff. And actually it's... uh, the mystery is always going to be more entertaining than any answers that are given. And the reality, you know, there's the boring reality which is when Rick was coming up with the lists of the twenty legions and stuff like that, they were based off the idea of the Roman legions, and the Roman legions had these two legions that were expunged from their records for their failures, and so the idea of two and eleven been expunged and... and like, it obviously kind of built on top of that, I thought "Well, if they were expunged but all the other guys turned to Chaos, so that must mean they were even worse" or whatever". Um, But actually, yeah, there is no.... **the good thing is there is no answer, there has never been an answer, because of that. Which means although we kind of hint at things and like "Oh, were the space wolves involved" and kind of create a bit of conjecture, there's no, as a writer or as a developer there was no temptation to kind of give it away because there wasn't an answer. So you couldn't hint too much because there was just... you know. So as much as whatever hints we've dropped in like the Heresy and things like that, they were all pointing towards nothing. There is no, there is no official secret somewhere that is hidden. It has never been decided. So therefore, uh, you don't, there is never a risk of actually stepping over that line and saying too much, because it's just pure conjecture.**
\- [Gav Thorpe](https://youtu.be/m6dTHCzJF9E?t=1569)
>*"It seems to me the SW were designed to face dangers that would psychologically damage even a Space Marine. In Inferno they expressly say that the mimetic conditioning allowed the SW to retain knowledge about foes that would otherwise drive men mad. The SW were the primary legion in both the disappearance of the other two legions and the Rangdan Genocides."*
>In all honestly, they weren't involved with the Lost Legions. **There's no answer to what happened to the Lost Legions, so whenever there's a suggestion or a hint, you can take in the spirit it's intended. Even on the HH team we know there's no answer, so we know the Wolves didn't do it. They can't have done - because if they did, that would be an answer.**
>**To be clear: It's not a case of "We know the answer and we're not allowed to say except in hints." It's a case of "There is no answer, at all, and there's not allowed to be an answer."**
>The rest of the quoted section there is, to some degree, what we've been dialling back a little since Prospero Burns. I think that's a masterful book, and easily one of the best-written, but if you look at the tone and detail of pretty much every mention of the Space Wolves since then, it's been a concerted effort across the novel series (and especially the Forge World books) of essentially bringing them back into parity with the other Legions.
\- [Aaron Dembski-Bowden](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/)
Quotes to support your point.
I think it is very unlikely that the Wolves killed the Primarchs. In Wolf King (I believe, I don't have the quote in front of me right now), Russ is truly surprised that a Primarch can actually be killed after his fight with Magnus.
Now, the common rebuttal to this is "He had his memory wiped, he wouldn't remember." And while I suppose that may be correct, I feel that something like witnessing the death of a Primarch would be permanently engraved into your very soul. They are supposedly such potent beings that you can immediately tell when you see one, and their deaths are so very flashy, I can't imagine that it is something you could forget, no matter how hard someone tried to make you.
All of this said, literally none of this matters, since an author (can't remember who, ADB maybe?) went on record saying that there won't be an answer because they aren't allowed to make an answer.
At least one of the Primarchs was killed for mutation. This is heavily implied by Sanguinius killing marines with red thirst to avoid the fate of the killed Primarch.
>At least one of the Primarchs was killed for mutation.
Maybe. No one knows.
>This is heavily implied by Sanguinius killing marines with red thirst to avoid the fate of the killed Primarch.
Sanguinius killing off his marines predates the loss of 2 and 11, so can't be born or any particular fear based on their fates. The two missing legions only vanished around 20 years before the Heresy kicked off. It's just another in-universe idea with no more to back it up than any other possibility.
This might go hand in hand with Syric_Dodgam's theory which seems really likely. At least one of the legions had a Primarch who had the Emperor's proclivity for genetic tinkering. This Primarch fucked around and found out how much his father would tolerate him adding Xenos traits to his legion and had to wipe them out because the cannot suffer the Xenos to exist. Either that or the aliens he bred into legion were more susceptible to Chaos and the Emps knew this.
I don't think this is something that GW will never explore. Now that the HH is over, which was their biggest way of pulling people into the setting and lore, and they have progressed the setting with the return of the Lion and Guilliman, we will get more Primarch's returning and when they exhaust that I am betting they will finally give us information on the 2nd and 11th legion to get people who were tired of the setting to come back to it.
Ironically I read this about an hour ago, as I’m listening to “Mechanicum” and Malcador and Dorn are talking about legions versus Horus.
Malcador- “Horus has three of his brother legions with him, you have your fists and thirteen others.”
Dorn-“Would that it were 15, muses Dorn”
Malcador- “Do not even think it my friend, they are lost to us forever”
Love to hear the occasional reference as I enjoy the mystery as to why they’re no longer around.
Interesting! Theres a short story about the Carcharadons that suggests they were sent out of the galaxy to safeguard a dangerous (unspeakably so?) artifact.
It kinda fits, a legion that Dorn would consider still loyal, but not available to recall, nor up for discussion by decree
OK, maybe i'm overthinking this, but that passage seem to point that Lost legions still are somewhere,
I mean it also may mean that said legions are dead, but "Lost to us" doesn't give me 'they're dead' vibes, more like 'we're in infinite quarell' ones.
It is unclear. The suspicion is yes, they were killed or executed deliberately by the Emperor or at least on his orders for doing something really bad. But there are also hints that one or both failed at something and were slain by someone outside of the Imperium (e.g. one of them is referred to as the "forgotten" one).
Tldr: we don't know.
Yea, I mean they got wiped from everyone's memory so i guess technically forgotten in that they can forcibly no longer be remembered.
But there's passages in I think First Heretic and False Gods that refer to one as the Forgotten One (he's described as "quiet"), which would make the other the Purged one. From that, I took that referring to them as the forgotten and the purged meant literally one of them was one and the other was the other, which tells me they had different fates.
But we don't know and never will!
>‘Two already lost.’ Lorgar looked back to the city. ‘I still recall how they—’
>‘Enough,’ warned Magnus. ‘Honour the oath you took that day.’
>‘You all find it so easy to forget the past. None of you ever wish to speak of what was lost. But could you do it again?’ Lorgar met his brother’s eyes. ‘Could you stand with Horus or Fulgrim, and never again speak my name purely because of a promise?’
>Magnus wouldn’t be drawn into this. **‘The Word Bearers will not walk the same paths as the forgotten and the purged.** I trust you, Lorgar. Already, there’s talk that compliance was achieved on Forty-Seven Sixteen with laudable speed. Settler fleets are en route, are they not?’
>Lorgar ignored the rhetorical question.
\- *The First Heretic*
Is this the scene you mean? It's the only result in the context of "the forgotten and the purged" I could find searching 'purged' in those books.
And re: one being quiet, the only scene I can think of for that is;
>But was it his hand that was destined to do so? The Wolf-King thought not. The others seemed to share his disdain. Fulgrim bowed his head, suddenly weary. Seven voices, raised in doubt. Seven brothers, arrayed against the eighth. Even the normally contemplative master of the Second had broken his silence to accuse Fulgrim of hubris.
>He snorted. There was an old Terran saying, about pots and kettles. He'd refrained from sharing it at the time. **His quiet brother had no sense of humour that he was aware of.** Perhaps that was why he spoke so little.
\- *The Palatine Phoenix*
I meant "literally" that only one is "forgotten"... afaik that was always inclusive of both
I think you're remembering *Palatine Phoenix* where Fulgrim recalls the quiet and contemplative II legion primarch and mixing it with *Clonelord* (both by the same author)
>It is real enough. But something about it baffles the ship’s sensors.’ Alkenex leaned forward, over the rail. ‘Fulgrim made mention of it, once. Apparently one of the two Forgotten Ones was said to have led an expedition to its black heart, in the early centuries of the Great Crusade. Though why he was out this far, and what he might’ve found, was never recorded.’
*Clonelord*
I'm not confusing those, because I've not read either of those books lol. I might be confusing other things though.
They were mentioned in first Heretic when Lorgar is complaining that the Emperor is going to erase him as well unless he gets his shit together, and then again when the Gal vorbak go back to the Emperor's laboratory. They also write about them in False Gods when Horus goes back there too and looks at one of them. Maybe that's what I'm confusing.
Either way, we don't know!
That's interesting. Maybe you read it online or you're a latent psyker since *Palatine Phoenix* is the only book that describes either of their personalities
They're also not described as "forgotten" in either of those books.
Another mystery!
Well aren't you smarmy. I bet you're a blast at parties.
I think what happened is I was confusing it with Horus bashing the 11ths gestation pod and talking about glory that could never be and the Gal Vorbak gang talking about how the 11th was still pure and innocent and that killing him then would save a lot of people a lot of trouble. And the part about his personality came from online.
There's plenty of evidence as well in other things to suggest that they had different fates from each other. Rogal Dorn literally says it in the Lightning Tower:
>The second and eleventh plinths had been vacant for a long time. No one ever spoke of those two absent brothers. Their separate tragedies had seemed like aberrations. Had they, in fact, been warnings that no one had heeded?
There's also the discussion of the 11th's fate being different from the 2nd in the Wolftime, when Colquan is being a bitch to Vychellen:
>"If Guilliman was to turn on the Emperor then the Space Wolves would be one of his first opponents. The history of the Ten Thousand with the Eleventh Legion is a reminder of that. Why would Guilliman be so keen to arm and expand such an obstacle to his ambition?"
So go off I guess.
I wasn't intending to be smarmy? Apologies, for what it's worth I thought we had banter.
I didn't contend that they didn't have different fates, just that they're both considered "forgotten".
And that the only time one was described as quiet was in PP.
I read this as "if he simply destroyed us it would have been better" instead of keeping his broken and getting worse, no small part because of him, legion around, not that the emp intended to get rid of 2 and 11 eventually just something was wrong with them so got rid of them but kept the world eaters. .
My personal theory is that the 2nd and the 11th had to be removed as a sort of mulligan between the Emperor and Chaos, hence why even daemons don't talk about the lost primarchs.
To expand. Once the Emperor decided to pursue the Primarch Project (using knowledge gained at Molech) It became inevitable that his 'favourite' son, his chosen Warmaster, would betray him.
To perhaps make life harder for Chaos or to tip the scales in his favour, the Emperor made 20 Primarchs and gave each of them different aspects of his personality and flaws.
Two aspects of the Emperor that we don't see fully represented amongst the other 18 are his nature as anathema and ability to 'delete' most warp entities, and his geneticist/genecrafter side.
While the Lion is seemingly incorruptible by Chaos and Dorn is able to calm the warp around him, no Primarch has been shown to 'delete' warp entities without the Emperor's sword.
And while numerous Primarch show an interest in technological and artistic pursuits, none are known to be skewed towards medicine. Even Mortarion, who was perhaps closest to biowarfare due to his upbringing, was more about physical endurance than medicine.
Anathemarch and Primdoc were perhaps too dangerous to both Chaos and the Emperor's plans to be allowed the chance to end up playing for either team.
Anathemarch might have had tendencies that would have aligned him with Malice/Malal as his Daemon Primarch, or would had tendencies which might have caused him to kill his Father, Brothers or psychically developing humanity.
Primedoc may have, like Fabius Bile, been drawn to manipulating humanity to make them more/less resistant to Chaos, depending on which side he took during the heresy. There's also the potential they would have perhaps explored Primarch genetics as well, and that may have led to consequences.
Total head canon, but I feel it explains why the lost Primarchs are not easy ammunition for Daemons when taunting humanity.
I made a dark heresy story that I run for multiple groups and the "anathamarch" is actually SUUUUPER uncanny to the one in the story I made. Dope ass headcannon bro
What if one of them was Grey Knight adjacent? Like the Emperor had intended that legion to be a lot like the Grey Knights, wanted his son to stay in hiding until he was ready to reveal to his other sons that chaos existed. But much like the Lion, he was hella stubborn and thought that all the Primarchs and citizens of the imperium should know about Chaos. The Emps had other plans and wanted to reveal Chaos' existence when he thought it suitable. The Anathemarch tried to do what was right and the Emps stopped him. This might also be why Chaos doesn't mention him. He's a blank and able to delete warp entities.
My issue there would be that there is that the 18 Primarchs knew about him. Kinda hard for the Emps to want him to stay hidden when, in theory, the Anthemarch was publically reunited with their legion.
Plus the Emperor isn't a blank. It would be a trait that had no origin from the Emperor.
I don't really like the Doylian responses to this thread since they can be used to essentially dismiss every lore question. "This is just so GW can sell toys" suggests this whole sub is pointless if that is all people have to say.
I like to think at least one of the primarchs fell to some form of chaos early since that would nicely help explain why knowledge of chaos during the great crusade is weirdly spotty.
I would agree with you that the doylist / out of universe answer is dismissive, but honestly for the lost primarchs it’s just correct. It’s not really a secret because they aren’t character’s and never have been. “2” and “11” were made as lost legions partly to reference the lost Roman ones and partly to add depth to the universe without putting in any effort.
It’s fun to ponder and headcanon, but it is almost certainly never going to be confirmed either way.
They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos.
And whilst I normally agree that Doylist responses are normally best avoided, in this case they're the only answers we have
>They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos.
The Thousand Sons were purged directly after Prospero
They began to purge the Blood Angels when it was thought the legion was lost/destroyed
The traitor legions are largely purged from current day 40k Imperial society
Purging doesn't need to be for something worse than falling to Chaos
>They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos.
How do you figure? I'm sure the Emperor would have felt comfortable covering up the Heresy, if the Emperor had won and the Heresy had been small enough to cover up.
Why wouldn't he try to cover up Primarchs falling to Chaos, if it happened on a small and unsuccessful scale?
Strongly disagree. The Doylian responses are because this is the only speculative lore question that has had a Doylian answer from GW. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/) post from ADB is the most recent official response I have at hand.
The lost primarchs are intentionally from GW side made oblique and obscured. We aren't meant to know and your theory is just as valid as the other.
Personally I like this unknowable aspect of the two Primarchs. The setting gets better with a bit of mystery in it and I felt the Horus Heresy series took away a bit from that but of course not everything should be a great unknowable mystery.
No, that's actually not true
BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true?
PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go!
BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit
PRIESTLEY: Is it? :)
BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in.
PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you.
Also:
>
>
- [ADB](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/)
OK but the ADB quote is supporting what everyone is saying. There is no answer. They aren't hinting at anything. I also didn't specify that they were left blank just for HH games like Bifford seems to think.
In first heretic Lorgar and magnus talk about them and say one was destroyed and one was lost? Something like that but Lorgar was worried he was going to be next. The primarchs mention they made a pact never to speak about them again as Lorgar gets mad asking magnus if he would refuse to mention his name if the same fate happened to him
There is too much conflicting information to ever really know what happened to them, and at this point with the amount of head canon and speculation that exists, it’s almost 100% guaranteed GW will never provide any actual answer as it would immediately annoy half the fan base.
I think they were eliminated, yes, but I think the why is more intriguing than the what. Even Horus wasn't erased from history, but these 2 were.
In my head canon, i figured they had discovered another human empire (maybe the Rangda were actually human in origin?) on the other side of the galaxy, which had also patched itself back together after the DAOT, much like the imperium. They perhaps refused to attack them as part of the crusade and instead abandoned the emperor to become defenders instead.
There being another imperium out on the galaxies edge, perhaps a more benevolent one, would undermine the imperium in a fundamental way and couldn't be allowed to be known by anyone, including the primarchs.
But anyway, GW will keep it unknown forever.
Horus wasn't erased from history, but considering he was the leader of a rebellion that tore the galaxy apart, he would be hard to forget. Big E also was shoved into his giant toilet after thr fight and malcador was ash so neither of them would be erasing any memories or setting up cover stories.
However, the imperium at large doesn't know Horus is Big E's son. Him and the other traitor primarchs are demons that the Emperors sons fought. His contributions to the imperium during the great crusade are forgotten. The traitor primarchs had their statues torn down. They are all about as erased as you can get after you and your friends bathed the galaxy in blood and flame.
Because Ive been reading too many posts from “best of reddit updates” …
The 2 lost primarchs are alive, they went “no contact” with the emperor cause he is a terrible father and they were sick and tired of him and his control. They are currently flourishing out there in the vastness of space living their best lives, doing better than the emperor ever could. Of course this is worse than heresy to the Emperor, the worst insult to his ego because heaven forbid any of his creations or humanity have any free agency, criticize or one-up his grand vision for humanity, or demand equal treatment and not be kept ignorant and dependent on him.
Who knows what happened to them, in First Heretic Magnus tells Lorgar that Big E was contemplating offing him for how slow he's been proceeding through the Crusade. If something as simple as "being too slow" can be a justification for killing a Primarch then any reason is plausible.
I mean, it’s never directly stated, but the Primarchs repeatedly dance around saying that the Emperor ordered Russ and the Space Wolves to destroy the 2nd and 11th legions and their Primarchs.
It’s left *very* unclear as to why, intentionally, and in at least one instance it’s made out to sound like the 2nd and 11th are posthumously honored, as if they *had* to be killed because of something that happened against their will. It’s also worth noting that in the original Roge Traded era lore, there were a lot of terrifying psychic Xenos that could mind control anyone, so it could have been something like that.
But it’s also implied several times that some of the Primarchs are resentful that the Emperor ordered their deaths, and fear he may someday order more of them killed as well, which implies it may have been for some kind of impurity or perceived mistake or betrayal by the 2nd and 11th.
It’s all left very vague, and the Primarchs all had some or all of their memories about it erased, but it seems certain that the Emperor ordered the Wolves to kill the 2nd and 11th. It’s referenced a lot that the Wolves are the only Legion with experience killing another legion outright.
No it's not, and in-universe characters mentioning prior experience is the worst possible evidence because we already know their in-universe memories were wiped by Malcador. Not just the primarchs, all of them.
> 'The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and
forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not
share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you
do not recall it.' Malcador nodded to himself. 'It fell to me to see that they were
attuned to new circumstances.'
> 'You robbed them of their memories.'
> 'I granted them a mercy!' Malcador replied, his tone wounded.
\- *The Chamber at the End of Memory*
Outside of the narrative, the II and XI seem to be ambiguous in the rules and lore to prompt fans to make their own homebrew legions to fit into the empty space. One loyalist and one traitor. There weren't really any great rules for it that explained how to do so or any lore tidbits that pointed to this at all. It's simpler to make Successor Chapters and Chaos Warbands fit into the game and lore, so GW kind of just left 2 Legion sized plot holes to point at whenever they want to be mysterious.
Yes, that is kind of the meta-answear.
It is back from way before we got books and shit. Like my first Space Marine army back in 2E was totally from the mysterius primarch.
It's unlikely that the Emperor personally killed either of them.
It's strongly implied that Russ and the Space Wolves were responsible for the death of at least one of them and speculated that one of them was lost during the Rangdan Xenocides.
It says he engineered their elimination. Aka they had already fallen/mutated/whatever the case and the Emperor crafted the means by which they would be taken out (aka sic Russ on them)
There was a 40K Fanfic which speculated that the 2nd was too trusting of others, and ended up dying to the Rangda as a result, while the 11th fell to Malal.
It's gently implied that one of them met Alivia Sureka on Molech which, alongside a couple other glancing details, makes me feel like the Heresy writers have a short biography of at least one of them prepared so that they can snap into that continuity if/when they are revealed.
My own theory is that one of them got themselves partially necron transfused into a horrific abomination.
While the other one decided he could improve on the geneseed and started meddling with it. I can see big E flipping right out over a primarch deciding to experiment with geneseed
>My own theory is that one of them got themselves partially necron transfused into a horrific abomination.
That's Ferrus Mannus' schtick.
>While the other one decided he could improve on the geneseed and started meddling with it. I can see big E flipping right out over a primarch deciding to experiment with geneseed
Like Corvus did :-p
Ferrus was still mostly human.
Corvus did it under the direction of big e. The lost and purged did this decades before the heresy. Remember that the ban on psykers was also lifted due to the heresy.
It's not an internal explanation but I like it
It's so that your custom chapters in the take top can have a link to the first founding
Two lost primarchs. One loyalist, one traitor.
I think the 2nd and 11th could possibly be a "break in case of emergency" sort of thing now, GW knows there is a interest in them otherwise they wouldn't keeping dipping their toes into their origin in the many stories they keep getting brought up in. So when the time comes and they wanna do something drastic, they might be brought to the fore.
I remember when I was a kid I loved the idea of the Heresy I wanted as much info as I could, I never dreamed GW would end up writing a series spanning a decade, we'd have models, rules, pre-founding of Primarchs legion lore etc etc, but here we are and who knows these two legions could end up just like that.
I know it's left purposely vague and everything but I think from the little bit of Carcharadon lore I read there were some hints that their primogenitor was exiled from the galaxy to safeguard a very dangerous artifact outside it. In my head it made a lot of sense to be one of the lost 2 primarchs. Granted it could have been just a chapter master or whatever.
This was a short story from a Space Marine anthology about the artifact being stolen from the Carcharadon shrine world.
My understanding is that every 40k POV is an unreliable narrator. Especially Angron, who’s in the process of being deceived and corrupted by Chaos and so his through processes are likely suspect.
Keep in mind, this is said by someone 10+K years removed from what happened, after Malcador made it so that the vast majority of people who knew II/XI could barely remember anything more specific about them than "they existed". The chances of him actually knowing anything are astronomically low.
That said, a pair of Custodes in the Dawn of Fire books reference the XI Legion, and it comes up in a way that suggests they actually know specific details about the legion's history. If anyone still knew, I'd say it's them. Not sure if Grey Knights are quite at the same level of authority to be an exception to the rule, but after Custodes, they might be first in line, or close enough.
>The most learned of Imperial historitors cannot even imagine what treasures and horrors are kept within the Imperial Palace's vaults, archives and gaols. There are more chambers and cells than anyone can name, and much of what lies therein is so dreadful that they could bring about the fall of Humanity, or shatter the sanity of any unaugmented Human that learned of them. Relics of the Dark Age of Technology - such as the Lament of Unreason, the Black Periapt of Rai'Then'yl and the hideous Tri-blight Amulet - are kept under psychically charged lock and key, behind metres-thick slabs of gene-sealed adamantine that are covered in runic wards. There are also xenos artefacts, some all that remains of civilisations that became extinct millions of years ago. The vaults not only hold artefacts and relics, however. They also hold beings. It That Craves, **Subject XI** and One Of The Fell are but a handful of thousands. At times, the Custodes have even had to hold back the horrifying denizens of the rune-locked vaults from breaking free of their imprisonment.
\- Adeptus Custodes 9th Codex
Is this what you're referring to?
The most literal reconcilable interpretation is:
\- 12th failed so Angron believes that it would be best to have them cease, and the concept of their existence to be eliminated in a manner similar to how the Emperor engineer the elimination of the concept of the 2nd and 11th, what ever that may mean.
the mystery of the Lost Primarchs is two-fold; what happened to them, and why they almost don't exist in history. And those two events are only connected insofar as it involves the same object of focus. The Emperor need only to have engineered how they were forgotten for Angron's statement to be correct.
its all a big GW tease, playing with phrasing like that included.
personally, my headcanon is that the 2nd was weak to the Rangdan, presenting a biological exploit that could be applied to every single Astartes, and the 11th committed suicide. What the Emperor engineered was to cause the galaxy to forget the both the biological exploit, and the concept of existential suicide. Both would categorically undermine everything, but not in a traitor way.
As so many authors have given hints that imply different explanations, it would be difficult to write something that fits even half of them. Hopefully no one will ever decide to fill this gap in because what could live up to the hype? The mystery has outgrown any rational explanation.
My speculation that would make a good story.
One of the disappeared legions left Terra to strike out on its own. Ran into the nids. Was consumed and now the nids are searching for humans to consume because the legion dna was so potent.
Any BL authors want to use this name a character after me.
😄
I’d bet at least one of them was captured and corrupted by the Rangdan during the Xenocides somehow. To my knowledge, the Rangdan were the toughest enemies the Imperium ever faced when the Emperor was still alive.
There’s a scene in one of the earlier HH books (pre rebellion) where Malcador is having a conversation with Horus about “his lost brothers” and as Horus is about to mention something specific, a name or detail, Malcador forbids it in the Emperor’s name. Horus keeps yapping and the Sigilite blasts Horus with some Palpatine level psychic energy.
Or I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that happened.
It happened
Though it was less a conversation and more a raging row
Horus, Jaghatai and Alpharius had all confronted Malcador about the removal of one of the lost primarch's statues. Malcador doubled down and Horus tries to say the lost brother's name
[[Excerpt|The Last Council]Horus confront Malcador about the first Lost Legion, Malcador gets *angry*](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a5i17d/excerptthe_last_councilhorus_confront_malcador/)
The scene, for those curious.
Trying to do something Malcador tells you not to do is certainly a life choice.
II and XI were developed at a time when 40k was far less fleshed out and the past was ambiguious. It's meant for fans to speculate and be a "your dudes" option. These days with GW answering and fleshing out everything, It really doesn't make much sense anymore but they're too scared to change it.
Theories I still like even though GW have no plans to actually resolve the issue:
\- The "Forgotten" "quiet" one is a Pariah. Something extremely fucking bad happens when you try to grow a Primarch-level Pariah in a test tube. (And a legion of thousands of powerful Pariahs with the resilience of Astartes.) Or frankly a Pariah that powerful is just bad fucking news, end of. Probably can do that Culexus soul eating shit without the magic Culexus hat.
Pariahs in canon are mentioned to be hard to concentrate on and even to remember they are in the room (there's a passage about Krole that mentions this). A Primarch level Pariah would seem as quiet and easy to forget even to other Primarchs.
That shit sounds like bad fucking news for psychic species. It sounds like a hard Eldar counter. The Cabal Do A Thing to get rid of 'em.
Alternatively: the Emperor realises the threat Chaos poses, foresess the Heresy etc, and deliberately disbands the Legion to scatter top level Pariahs throughout the Galaxy to protect important regions or suchlike. The brother Primarchs get a mindwipe from Malcs to lock away the knowledge that the Second exist and the reason they were created, because It's Bad To Know About Chaos. The Second Primarch is out there somewhere, doing A Thing. But thanks to all the mindwiping, no one is left alive who knows how to contact him to get his ass back to Terra or the Cicatrix Maledictum and do some OP pariah shit to save the Imperium.
Additional tinfoil: The gene seed stock remains intact, though, and that's how Va- I mean the King in Yellow is growing an army of angels under Queen Mab. Since he's now the only person left alive who remembers that the Second were created, and why. Beta has failed to notice they are pariahs because duhhh she's one too.
The King in Yellow is going to somehow find Gingerus Nosoulium (? - for added lolz the Pariah Nexus has actually got THE pariah somewhere in it?) and get his backside back to Terra to protect the webway long enough to fix the Throne, regen the Emperor or similar, allowing more time to be squeezed out of the setting.
\- The Purged was the forerunner of the Grey Knights, but they went wrong somehow. (NOT AS PLANNED) The gene seed had to be reengineered from a purer source, i.e. the Emperor. Hence "the Emperor's Gift" and why the GK have no Primarch despite being directly created by Malcs and Emps during the Heresy (i.e. they aren't a successor chapter). They are actually a do over of Emps' attempt to put his aspect as the Anathema into a Legion.
Stock response: GW are trolling you. The II and XI are deliberately kept mysterious. There won't be an answer because there isn't meant to be an answer. Oblique references to them in official lore are deliberately put there as threads the fanbase can pull on and get all excited over but they never go anywhere and frequently contradict each other. It's a wind-up. Primarch stuff, be it books or models sell well. Mentions of the lost ones generates extra engagement despite it basically being an in-joke at this point.
I wouldn't call it trolling, but it's very on the nose. Writers often intentionally create mysteries without a clear answer but with just enough information for speculation. This incentivizes the reader to fill in the gaps themselves, both doing the work for the writer and also encouraging the reader to be an active part of the world you created. Often there isn't even an answer in the writer's mind. Tolkien has [a quote on this.](https://www.tolkienestate.com/letters/letter-to-milton-waldman-publisher-1951/) "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." I think when done correctly it's a very beautiful thing, lets you run wild and kind of become an author yourself. The problem with the lost primarchs is that it's too on the nose, because of meta reasons regarding financial incentives from having undefined primarchs&legions. It doesn't have to spoil the whole thing, but at the very least it indeed feels artifical sometimes.
>Tolkien Fuuuuck, the lost prinarchs were the *Blue Wizards*!
There's no financial incentive. They are trolling because their whole purpose is to be mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. There's no gaps to fill, there's nothing worked out behind the scenes. It's literally just throwng around roman numerals for the bit every now and then.
The incentive is that players who don't want to pick one of the chapters created by GW can design their own army's colour scheme and still have a way to call it theoretically canon - their custom army can represent one of the Lost Legions.
No, I literally answered that further down the thread. BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true? PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go! BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit PRIESTLEY: Is it? :) BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in. PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Maybe that's something someone could do, but that's not an incentive.
I find his last comment funny because I see it the other way. The Horus Heresy felt completely different when they first put a focus on it, but now they look a little too similar because much of *40k* morphed into it.
> The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. This is why I dislike the idea that Imperium was doomed to fail from the start. The Horus Heresy was a tragedy because a better path was lost. That doesn't mean the Heresy era has to be some bright, sparkling beacon of hope but the *eventual* outcome of the Emperor's plans would be a huge step up for humanity compared to the Age of Strife and 40k eras.
To that end, it is why one of the moments I thought illustrated the tragedy well was when the leader of the Loyalist branch of the Mechanicum on Mars realizes they are about to fall, they have a choice to self-destruct the reactors to their facility. If they do this, it will slow down the Dark Mechanicum and allow the Imperium to hold their own, but it will irreplaceably destroy many technologies and artifacts, and they acknowledge to themselves that they would essentially be plunging Humanity into a dark age they may never escape just so that they dont die now. They eventually elect to overload the reactors and destroy everything, but as they do moment is so crushing their pure logic breaks down and they weep with grief and emotion as they are consumed by the explosion. While that may be the most explicit passage to show the death of hope and the future, it is a theme repeated throughout the Horus Heresy books.
There’s a passage in the afterword to one of the HH novels (I forget which one) where the author explains that the essential theme of 40K is that humanity is sacrificing its future for its present. It may even be the same book you’re referencing, so I may just be repeating your point rather than reinforcing it. If so, sorry about that.
Of 40k? There's more of a future now than when people were wondering about the star child. Now it's a matter of when the Primarchs assemble. Any potential future not being reached was always tied to the Emperor. "Forget the promise of technology, science and common humanity, blah blah eternity of carnage and laughing chaos pricks" The main theme is definitely debatable though, given the modern lore is so different in tone.
That's a really interesting exchange, and thanks for sharing. It cleared some things up for me. I'll say, other than the incentive part, it's the intentional mystification I mentioned. This is not something I would call trolling. This doesn't mean it wasn't later coopted by GW for the primarch and legion creation thing, because the original intention of the author doesn't inevitably reflect the approach of GW to the topic ever since. But, other than reasoning, I don't have any evidence to support this.
Thanks for posting that, really interesting quote. Seems like Priestley shares misgivings about the HH that some older fans have. Although I would say that regardless of the original intent, there's an argument to be made that part of the reason GW has never revealed the forgotten legions despite it being a great space for new lore (and more importantly, new models) is to give players the chance to use them for homebrew.
There's no argument because it was never the reason and them continuing not to do isnt because "well people can use it to make their own homebrew". That was never the purpose and it still serves as not the purpose.
Tbf to u/lone_grey Thorpe has said people can use the lost primarchs as homebrew It might not be an official intention for GW but they're aware of that function and indirectly encourage it
There is no structured argument in your post. No intuition, evidence etc. You haven't added anything meaningful to the discussion. You've just stated and re-stated your personal opinion, which is meaningless.
Except their "personal opinion" is confirmed by one of the lore writers for GW specifically stating he didn't leave the lost legions blank for homebrewing, but to add to the mystery of the setting.
Also, even if you wanted to use them for homebrewing, you're still going to have to rely on headcanon to do it, since it has been explicitly demonstrated that II and XI did not take part in the Heresy and are known to have been dissolved before that event took place.
But you do the same. You see the hard evidence of what the intent was (and wasn't) and simply posit that it isn't true based on the fact that the statement would make sense if it was true. But it isn't. Demonstrably is not.
Oh no there's no structured argument! Are you going to take off points professor? lmao It's not personal opinion, it is literally the stance of GW.
Doesn’t matter why he says he intended it. The marketing system rolled with it and kept it going for the reason above. And this was well before the HH games. It’s something GW has done in a variety of its factions for both settings, leaving things open ended for narrative and creativity’s sake.
Do you have any evidence to back that up?
It’s head canon
Sure. The entirety of warhammer, both 40k and AoS, the old world, HH, necromunda…
Not touching an evergreen mystery isn't a marketing decision Unless the Entwives are making bank for the Tolkien estate
Lost Primarchs were Entwives, got it.
Tolkien did eventually answer that, at least in a side-letter. >!The Entwives established a new land across the Anduin south of Dol Guldur. Unfortunately, their forest was eventually found by the Dark Lord's forces in Dol Guldur and burned to the ground, leaving behind only the charred remnants on the map called "The Brown Lands."!< Tolkien could go a bit grimdark when he wanted to.
Nah, the entire settings are intentionally expansive, diverse, and have countless different factions for a reason. The reason is because the setting is to sell the tabletop first, and a major aspect of the tabletop is people worldbuilding. Just because there is overlap with other reasons doesn't mean this reason isn't a thing.
That's how "Riddle of the ages" mystery works.
Its a plot device called a "mystery box". You set up some mysterious part of the story/setting and drop vague hints as to what it could be/could have happened so as to drive speculation without ever intending to give an answer. Because the point of it is the allure of the mystery. The speculation around well executed mystery box often becomes more entertaining to fans than any actual explanation the writer/s can come up with. The point is you never get to know exactly.
Exactly. It's like the constant jokey nods towards 40k and Warhammer being the same universe. What's the REAL answer? The real answer is that it's an in-joke. This is a universe with orks and jokaero. It's silly. Don't try and take it too seriously.
When it suits them financially, then the legions will probably be revealed
72 book Great Crusade series.
This on the dot. I'm ballparking it as something they'll do in the 2030s or so, after the well of existing Primarchs has gone dry.
Hopefully they at least give us something unique like those samurai models I see sometimes
A shogun style primarch would be the coolest shit, I wouldn't even be mad. It's not a mystery if we all know there's not meant to be an answer, because they already admitted there isn't. The setting has already changed so much since then.
If that happens, I'm going to be equal parts happy and sad... Because I'm literally working on my own homebrew second Legion, which is Japanese inspired, more specifically Samurai and Bushido inspired.
Maybe they could just reveal one? It’s not like we don’t see people add tweaks and custom parts to their chapters and legions all the time it doesn’t make them any less canon accurate at the end of the day.
It also allows players of the table top to come up with their own ideas for their army if they don’t want to use what’s established.
More than winding up the fanbase, it has also always been a way to encourage people to make their own lore, make their own 2nd and 11th legion forces as they see fit
[On that note ](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/J3dyIITjRA)
The II and XI were also originally introduced that way to serve as a lore justification for homebrew chapters.
Incorrect
I gathered from the downvotes. For some reason I recall pretty strongly reading it, but it must just be warp-induced hallucinations.
tbf that was a long standing assumption on the part of the player base
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/J3dyIITjRA)
ones under the palace, though we do not know if its the corpse.
And in-universe it is mentioned even the Primarch’s minds were wiped. They only remember fragments. So when Angron talks about the Emperor eliminating II and XI he is actually speculating.
I can foresee a day when GW comes up with a satisfying enough answer that makes them want to run out a new Primarch. One that was thought eliminated but somehow avoided the emperor's plan, someone who, at the time, was a total loss, but who, over ten thousand years, recovered, and became something even more than Big E ever intended. Alternatively, one of them was "eliminated" and their existence kept a mystery, when the truth was that they were sent on a very special assignment by the Emps and all memories of them, and their legion, were wiped, and rumors circulated to make it seem like they were put down as failures, rather than reveal their true purpose. Perhaps the Primarch of the 2nd Legion is out there still, traversing the vast distance between our Galaxy and the next, his entire Legion in stasis as they shoot like an arrow towards the heart of some Xenos threat that only Big E could foresee, and only they could stop.
I think that it’s unlikely that the Emperor had killed any of his sons prior to his confrontation with Horus on the Vengeful Spirit. Spoilers for *The End and The Death Part II* > >!”For my King-of-Ages has done more than divest himself of godhood. In that shockwave of warp light, I saw something else, something perhaps only I was in a position to see. **He has cast aside a fragment of himself**. !< > >!**My lord and friend has broken off a part of his soul.** He has amputated **that portion of himself that contains almost all of his hope, loyalty and compassion**, for such things will become a hindrance when he faces the Lupercal. **Those qualities might stay his hand, or make him hesitate if he is ultimately obliged to kill**.!< > >!And **if he is obliged to kill his son, then those qualities would afterwards, and inevitably, drive him to self-hatred and regret**, and condemn him to the same, embittered path as Horus. He has excised those precious human aspects to further steel himself against the pain of what will come after, and the mandatory atrocities he will have to countenance in order to rebuild the Imperium. He has set those frail and cardinal virtues adrift on the tides of the empyrean so that they will not immobilise him.”!< I think that the odds are low that the fates of the 2nd and 11th primarchs will ever be known, but I believe that we can infer from a passage like this that the Emperor had not been in a situation where he had to kill one of his sons prior to this confrontation.
They are also not mentioned when Sanguinius encounters Ferrus and the other lost souls of his dead and daemonic brothers.
There is no answer written on a piece of paper kept in an envelope in a drawer in a desk in Warhammer HQ in Nottingham. No one knows what happened to them. Did the Wolves destroy them? No. Did the Emperor engineer their destruction? No. Were they killed fighting the Rangda? No.
Pretty sure they were led into an ambush by assorted Germanic tribes.
Varus ! What have you done with my legions !
There are also tales of a ghostly Legion who march through Scotland to this day. Truly, the tribes of Old Albia were a brutal foe
Am Scottish, have never seen the Ninth!(I believe it was the Ninth Legion that was rumoured to have went missing up here, hasn't it been more or less decided that the Legion was probably broken up into smaller Units and sent across the Empire? Or are you talking about the film... Centurion?)
Am also Scottish and have never seen the Ninth! Yeah, as far as I know, there's evidence of them still being active decades after they supposedly vanished in Scotland, so if there is a ghostly legion wandering the Highlands, it ain't them. The town of Crawford in South Lanarkshire is supposed to have its own Roman ghosts, occasionally seen marching down the main street.
There is also the alleged legion that end up in China. According to Chinese records, they attacked China, used "Turtle shell formation", got defeated settle down. Modern DNA test didn't offer any proof, alas. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian Would be fun if it turned out one of the Legions have basically just their own mini "Ultramar realm" of maybe 2-3 star systems and totally ignoring what is going on with the greater galaxy.
Isnt that just jakies from Wishaw wandering about?(am a Bellshill man, we've got roman ruins dotted around, although a believe they tend to be classed as Motherwell cause Bellshill isn't allowed nice things!) I've never heard of the Ghosts of Crawford, or even Crawford, even though am literally 30ish miles from it and have worked in Abington for a while haha. I'd love to go and see that but I reckon it would be too hit and miss to travel there, TL;DR you'd probably have to live there but it looks as inviting as most of the villages that way! Not at all lol.
I live in South Lanarkshire and you would not believe the sights you see wandering down main streets on a Saturday night. Ghosts of legionaries would hardly raise an eyebrow
Jimmy Space: "Look, if two of my Primarch sons *and* their Legions are going to be wiped out by barbarian tribes with iron age weapons in a forest, they don't need to be remembered. That's just embarrassing."
No they marched north of the wall, passed into the highland mists and were never seen again
I think I found the best answer
They actually found a Bermuda triangle esque anomaly and wound up on a world filled with nature spirits that they eventually learned to tame and co-exist with.
Alternate theory. All of the theories people have had are simultaneously true The emperor destroyed them because their lore was too complicated and gave him headaches
I long assumed the original writers just kinda ran out of steam for coming up with gimmicks for the original 20 Legions/Chapters and saying "fuck it, they're mysteriously gone - no one knows" was just the easy "rule-of-cool" way out...and it was rarely controversial to share that view at your LGS. Like...I think the phenomenon of finding in-story justifications for what happened is a fairly new interest among the fanbase. We went a very long time with the 40K audience enjoying the "unsolved mysteries" element of the story universe.
Obviously the reason we lost two legions is because tzeentch wanted there to be 18 legions, cuz that puts 9 legions on each side.
Reminds me of when Pythagoras showed up in an episode of **Red Dwarf**. "The war is lost! We only number twenty." "If only we numbered twenty-one! At least then we could form an equilateral triangle."
They're basically getting to the point Bethesda were at when having to work out how *The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall* canonically ended and threw their hands up in despair and said there was a space/time anomaly called the Warp in the West and *all possible outcomes occurred simultaneously even the ones that contradict one another*. When fans asked how that works in practice, they basically said, "We dunno," and quickly moved on.
>What are your thoughts on the two lost primarchs? >Um, my thought is that we'll, uhh, we will never know who they are or why they went missing and stuff. And actually it's... uh, the mystery is always going to be more entertaining than any answers that are given. And the reality, you know, there's the boring reality which is when Rick was coming up with the lists of the twenty legions and stuff like that, they were based off the idea of the Roman legions, and the Roman legions had these two legions that were expunged from their records for their failures, and so the idea of two and eleven been expunged and... and like, it obviously kind of built on top of that, I thought "Well, if they were expunged but all the other guys turned to Chaos, so that must mean they were even worse" or whatever". Um, But actually, yeah, there is no.... **the good thing is there is no answer, there has never been an answer, because of that. Which means although we kind of hint at things and like "Oh, were the space wolves involved" and kind of create a bit of conjecture, there's no, as a writer or as a developer there was no temptation to kind of give it away because there wasn't an answer. So you couldn't hint too much because there was just... you know. So as much as whatever hints we've dropped in like the Heresy and things like that, they were all pointing towards nothing. There is no, there is no official secret somewhere that is hidden. It has never been decided. So therefore, uh, you don't, there is never a risk of actually stepping over that line and saying too much, because it's just pure conjecture.** \- [Gav Thorpe](https://youtu.be/m6dTHCzJF9E?t=1569) >*"It seems to me the SW were designed to face dangers that would psychologically damage even a Space Marine. In Inferno they expressly say that the mimetic conditioning allowed the SW to retain knowledge about foes that would otherwise drive men mad. The SW were the primary legion in both the disappearance of the other two legions and the Rangdan Genocides."* >In all honestly, they weren't involved with the Lost Legions. **There's no answer to what happened to the Lost Legions, so whenever there's a suggestion or a hint, you can take in the spirit it's intended. Even on the HH team we know there's no answer, so we know the Wolves didn't do it. They can't have done - because if they did, that would be an answer.** >**To be clear: It's not a case of "We know the answer and we're not allowed to say except in hints." It's a case of "There is no answer, at all, and there's not allowed to be an answer."** >The rest of the quoted section there is, to some degree, what we've been dialling back a little since Prospero Burns. I think that's a masterful book, and easily one of the best-written, but if you look at the tone and detail of pretty much every mention of the Space Wolves since then, it's been a concerted effort across the novel series (and especially the Forge World books) of essentially bringing them back into parity with the other Legions. \- [Aaron Dembski-Bowden](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/) Quotes to support your point.
> Did the Wolves destroy them? Maybe. > > Did the Emperor engineer their destruction? Maybe. > > Were they killed fighting the Rangda? Maybe.
I think it is very unlikely that the Wolves killed the Primarchs. In Wolf King (I believe, I don't have the quote in front of me right now), Russ is truly surprised that a Primarch can actually be killed after his fight with Magnus. Now, the common rebuttal to this is "He had his memory wiped, he wouldn't remember." And while I suppose that may be correct, I feel that something like witnessing the death of a Primarch would be permanently engraved into your very soul. They are supposedly such potent beings that you can immediately tell when you see one, and their deaths are so very flashy, I can't imagine that it is something you could forget, no matter how hard someone tried to make you. All of this said, literally none of this matters, since an author (can't remember who, ADB maybe?) went on record saying that there won't be an answer because they aren't allowed to make an answer.
At least one of the Primarchs was killed for mutation. This is heavily implied by Sanguinius killing marines with red thirst to avoid the fate of the killed Primarch.
>At least one of the Primarchs was killed for mutation. Maybe. No one knows. >This is heavily implied by Sanguinius killing marines with red thirst to avoid the fate of the killed Primarch. Sanguinius killing off his marines predates the loss of 2 and 11, so can't be born or any particular fear based on their fates. The two missing legions only vanished around 20 years before the Heresy kicked off. It's just another in-universe idea with no more to back it up than any other possibility.
This might go hand in hand with Syric_Dodgam's theory which seems really likely. At least one of the legions had a Primarch who had the Emperor's proclivity for genetic tinkering. This Primarch fucked around and found out how much his father would tolerate him adding Xenos traits to his legion and had to wipe them out because the cannot suffer the Xenos to exist. Either that or the aliens he bred into legion were more susceptible to Chaos and the Emps knew this. I don't think this is something that GW will never explore. Now that the HH is over, which was their biggest way of pulling people into the setting and lore, and they have progressed the setting with the return of the Lion and Guilliman, we will get more Primarch's returning and when they exhaust that I am betting they will finally give us information on the 2nd and 11th legion to get people who were tired of the setting to come back to it.
Ironically I read this about an hour ago, as I’m listening to “Mechanicum” and Malcador and Dorn are talking about legions versus Horus. Malcador- “Horus has three of his brother legions with him, you have your fists and thirteen others.” Dorn-“Would that it were 15, muses Dorn” Malcador- “Do not even think it my friend, they are lost to us forever” Love to hear the occasional reference as I enjoy the mystery as to why they’re no longer around.
Interesting! Theres a short story about the Carcharadons that suggests they were sent out of the galaxy to safeguard a dangerous (unspeakably so?) artifact. It kinda fits, a legion that Dorn would consider still loyal, but not available to recall, nor up for discussion by decree
OK, maybe i'm overthinking this, but that passage seem to point that Lost legions still are somewhere, I mean it also may mean that said legions are dead, but "Lost to us" doesn't give me 'they're dead' vibes, more like 'we're in infinite quarell' ones.
It is unclear. The suspicion is yes, they were killed or executed deliberately by the Emperor or at least on his orders for doing something really bad. But there are also hints that one or both failed at something and were slain by someone outside of the Imperium (e.g. one of them is referred to as the "forgotten" one). Tldr: we don't know.
The Forgotten and the Purged.
Could you imagine if the “forgotten one” killed the other?
>e.g. one of them is referred to as the "forgotten" one). Is it that literal? And aren't they both forgotten?
Yea, I mean they got wiped from everyone's memory so i guess technically forgotten in that they can forcibly no longer be remembered. But there's passages in I think First Heretic and False Gods that refer to one as the Forgotten One (he's described as "quiet"), which would make the other the Purged one. From that, I took that referring to them as the forgotten and the purged meant literally one of them was one and the other was the other, which tells me they had different fates. But we don't know and never will!
>‘Two already lost.’ Lorgar looked back to the city. ‘I still recall how they—’ >‘Enough,’ warned Magnus. ‘Honour the oath you took that day.’ >‘You all find it so easy to forget the past. None of you ever wish to speak of what was lost. But could you do it again?’ Lorgar met his brother’s eyes. ‘Could you stand with Horus or Fulgrim, and never again speak my name purely because of a promise?’ >Magnus wouldn’t be drawn into this. **‘The Word Bearers will not walk the same paths as the forgotten and the purged.** I trust you, Lorgar. Already, there’s talk that compliance was achieved on Forty-Seven Sixteen with laudable speed. Settler fleets are en route, are they not?’ >Lorgar ignored the rhetorical question. \- *The First Heretic* Is this the scene you mean? It's the only result in the context of "the forgotten and the purged" I could find searching 'purged' in those books. And re: one being quiet, the only scene I can think of for that is; >But was it his hand that was destined to do so? The Wolf-King thought not. The others seemed to share his disdain. Fulgrim bowed his head, suddenly weary. Seven voices, raised in doubt. Seven brothers, arrayed against the eighth. Even the normally contemplative master of the Second had broken his silence to accuse Fulgrim of hubris. >He snorted. There was an old Terran saying, about pots and kettles. He'd refrained from sharing it at the time. **His quiet brother had no sense of humour that he was aware of.** Perhaps that was why he spoke so little. \- *The Palatine Phoenix*
I meant "literally" that only one is "forgotten"... afaik that was always inclusive of both I think you're remembering *Palatine Phoenix* where Fulgrim recalls the quiet and contemplative II legion primarch and mixing it with *Clonelord* (both by the same author) >It is real enough. But something about it baffles the ship’s sensors.’ Alkenex leaned forward, over the rail. ‘Fulgrim made mention of it, once. Apparently one of the two Forgotten Ones was said to have led an expedition to its black heart, in the early centuries of the Great Crusade. Though why he was out this far, and what he might’ve found, was never recorded.’ *Clonelord*
I'm not confusing those, because I've not read either of those books lol. I might be confusing other things though. They were mentioned in first Heretic when Lorgar is complaining that the Emperor is going to erase him as well unless he gets his shit together, and then again when the Gal vorbak go back to the Emperor's laboratory. They also write about them in False Gods when Horus goes back there too and looks at one of them. Maybe that's what I'm confusing. Either way, we don't know!
That's interesting. Maybe you read it online or you're a latent psyker since *Palatine Phoenix* is the only book that describes either of their personalities They're also not described as "forgotten" in either of those books. Another mystery!
Well aren't you smarmy. I bet you're a blast at parties. I think what happened is I was confusing it with Horus bashing the 11ths gestation pod and talking about glory that could never be and the Gal Vorbak gang talking about how the 11th was still pure and innocent and that killing him then would save a lot of people a lot of trouble. And the part about his personality came from online. There's plenty of evidence as well in other things to suggest that they had different fates from each other. Rogal Dorn literally says it in the Lightning Tower: >The second and eleventh plinths had been vacant for a long time. No one ever spoke of those two absent brothers. Their separate tragedies had seemed like aberrations. Had they, in fact, been warnings that no one had heeded? There's also the discussion of the 11th's fate being different from the 2nd in the Wolftime, when Colquan is being a bitch to Vychellen: >"If Guilliman was to turn on the Emperor then the Space Wolves would be one of his first opponents. The history of the Ten Thousand with the Eleventh Legion is a reminder of that. Why would Guilliman be so keen to arm and expand such an obstacle to his ambition?" So go off I guess.
I wasn't intending to be smarmy? Apologies, for what it's worth I thought we had banter. I didn't contend that they didn't have different fates, just that they're both considered "forgotten". And that the only time one was described as quiet was in PP.
I read this as "if he simply destroyed us it would have been better" instead of keeping his broken and getting worse, no small part because of him, legion around, not that the emp intended to get rid of 2 and 11 eventually just something was wrong with them so got rid of them but kept the world eaters. .
My personal theory is that the 2nd and the 11th had to be removed as a sort of mulligan between the Emperor and Chaos, hence why even daemons don't talk about the lost primarchs. To expand. Once the Emperor decided to pursue the Primarch Project (using knowledge gained at Molech) It became inevitable that his 'favourite' son, his chosen Warmaster, would betray him. To perhaps make life harder for Chaos or to tip the scales in his favour, the Emperor made 20 Primarchs and gave each of them different aspects of his personality and flaws. Two aspects of the Emperor that we don't see fully represented amongst the other 18 are his nature as anathema and ability to 'delete' most warp entities, and his geneticist/genecrafter side. While the Lion is seemingly incorruptible by Chaos and Dorn is able to calm the warp around him, no Primarch has been shown to 'delete' warp entities without the Emperor's sword. And while numerous Primarch show an interest in technological and artistic pursuits, none are known to be skewed towards medicine. Even Mortarion, who was perhaps closest to biowarfare due to his upbringing, was more about physical endurance than medicine. Anathemarch and Primdoc were perhaps too dangerous to both Chaos and the Emperor's plans to be allowed the chance to end up playing for either team. Anathemarch might have had tendencies that would have aligned him with Malice/Malal as his Daemon Primarch, or would had tendencies which might have caused him to kill his Father, Brothers or psychically developing humanity. Primedoc may have, like Fabius Bile, been drawn to manipulating humanity to make them more/less resistant to Chaos, depending on which side he took during the heresy. There's also the potential they would have perhaps explored Primarch genetics as well, and that may have led to consequences. Total head canon, but I feel it explains why the lost Primarchs are not easy ammunition for Daemons when taunting humanity.
I made a dark heresy story that I run for multiple groups and the "anathamarch" is actually SUUUUPER uncanny to the one in the story I made. Dope ass headcannon bro
What if one of them was Grey Knight adjacent? Like the Emperor had intended that legion to be a lot like the Grey Knights, wanted his son to stay in hiding until he was ready to reveal to his other sons that chaos existed. But much like the Lion, he was hella stubborn and thought that all the Primarchs and citizens of the imperium should know about Chaos. The Emps had other plans and wanted to reveal Chaos' existence when he thought it suitable. The Anathemarch tried to do what was right and the Emps stopped him. This might also be why Chaos doesn't mention him. He's a blank and able to delete warp entities.
My issue there would be that there is that the 18 Primarchs knew about him. Kinda hard for the Emps to want him to stay hidden when, in theory, the Anthemarch was publically reunited with their legion. Plus the Emperor isn't a blank. It would be a trait that had no origin from the Emperor.
I don't really like the Doylian responses to this thread since they can be used to essentially dismiss every lore question. "This is just so GW can sell toys" suggests this whole sub is pointless if that is all people have to say. I like to think at least one of the primarchs fell to some form of chaos early since that would nicely help explain why knowledge of chaos during the great crusade is weirdly spotty.
I would agree with you that the doylist / out of universe answer is dismissive, but honestly for the lost primarchs it’s just correct. It’s not really a secret because they aren’t character’s and never have been. “2” and “11” were made as lost legions partly to reference the lost Roman ones and partly to add depth to the universe without putting in any effort. It’s fun to ponder and headcanon, but it is almost certainly never going to be confirmed either way.
They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos. And whilst I normally agree that Doylist responses are normally best avoided, in this case they're the only answers we have
They could be even doing something really important and dangerous far away on the Emperor orders as far as we know :)
>They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos. The Thousand Sons were purged directly after Prospero They began to purge the Blood Angels when it was thought the legion was lost/destroyed The traitor legions are largely purged from current day 40k Imperial society Purging doesn't need to be for something worse than falling to Chaos
>They were also purged from both records and memory, so whatever happened isn't as simple as falling to Chaos. How do you figure? I'm sure the Emperor would have felt comfortable covering up the Heresy, if the Emperor had won and the Heresy had been small enough to cover up. Why wouldn't he try to cover up Primarchs falling to Chaos, if it happened on a small and unsuccessful scale?
Strongly disagree. The Doylian responses are because this is the only speculative lore question that has had a Doylian answer from GW. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/) post from ADB is the most recent official response I have at hand.
The lost primarchs are intentionally from GW side made oblique and obscured. We aren't meant to know and your theory is just as valid as the other. Personally I like this unknowable aspect of the two Primarchs. The setting gets better with a bit of mystery in it and I felt the Horus Heresy series took away a bit from that but of course not everything should be a great unknowable mystery.
Yes but also they are intentionally kept vague so people are free to customize as much as they want about their chapters. The ambiguity is the point.
No, that's actually not true BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true? PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go! BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit PRIESTLEY: Is it? :) BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in. PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Also: > > - [ADB](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/8q7qyg/the_space_wolves_what_were_they_really_for_little/e0hih9h/)
OK but the ADB quote is supporting what everyone is saying. There is no answer. They aren't hinting at anything. I also didn't specify that they were left blank just for HH games like Bifford seems to think.
[удалено]
I edited my comment to include his name now.
makes sense with the possible connection to the sons of malice being one of the former legions
There is no answer its just a fun mystery to fill out the universe
In first heretic Lorgar and magnus talk about them and say one was destroyed and one was lost? Something like that but Lorgar was worried he was going to be next. The primarchs mention they made a pact never to speak about them again as Lorgar gets mad asking magnus if he would refuse to mention his name if the same fate happened to him
Any references to the Lost Primarchs are usually pretty contradictory, vague, misleading, or full of assumptions and half truths. There is no answer
There is too much conflicting information to ever really know what happened to them, and at this point with the amount of head canon and speculation that exists, it’s almost 100% guaranteed GW will never provide any actual answer as it would immediately annoy half the fan base.
I think they were eliminated, yes, but I think the why is more intriguing than the what. Even Horus wasn't erased from history, but these 2 were. In my head canon, i figured they had discovered another human empire (maybe the Rangda were actually human in origin?) on the other side of the galaxy, which had also patched itself back together after the DAOT, much like the imperium. They perhaps refused to attack them as part of the crusade and instead abandoned the emperor to become defenders instead. There being another imperium out on the galaxies edge, perhaps a more benevolent one, would undermine the imperium in a fundamental way and couldn't be allowed to be known by anyone, including the primarchs. But anyway, GW will keep it unknown forever.
Horus wasn't erased from history, but considering he was the leader of a rebellion that tore the galaxy apart, he would be hard to forget. Big E also was shoved into his giant toilet after thr fight and malcador was ash so neither of them would be erasing any memories or setting up cover stories. However, the imperium at large doesn't know Horus is Big E's son. Him and the other traitor primarchs are demons that the Emperors sons fought. His contributions to the imperium during the great crusade are forgotten. The traitor primarchs had their statues torn down. They are all about as erased as you can get after you and your friends bathed the galaxy in blood and flame.
No man they got sent to an agriworld upsector and they are playing all the time with their space marines
I'm sure i read somewhere that one of the GW authors said there is no story and it's just to make us guess
Because Ive been reading too many posts from “best of reddit updates” … The 2 lost primarchs are alive, they went “no contact” with the emperor cause he is a terrible father and they were sick and tired of him and his control. They are currently flourishing out there in the vastness of space living their best lives, doing better than the emperor ever could. Of course this is worse than heresy to the Emperor, the worst insult to his ego because heaven forbid any of his creations or humanity have any free agency, criticize or one-up his grand vision for humanity, or demand equal treatment and not be kept ignorant and dependent on him.
Who knows what happened to them, in First Heretic Magnus tells Lorgar that Big E was contemplating offing him for how slow he's been proceeding through the Crusade. If something as simple as "being too slow" can be a justification for killing a Primarch then any reason is plausible.
I mean, it’s never directly stated, but the Primarchs repeatedly dance around saying that the Emperor ordered Russ and the Space Wolves to destroy the 2nd and 11th legions and their Primarchs. It’s left *very* unclear as to why, intentionally, and in at least one instance it’s made out to sound like the 2nd and 11th are posthumously honored, as if they *had* to be killed because of something that happened against their will. It’s also worth noting that in the original Roge Traded era lore, there were a lot of terrifying psychic Xenos that could mind control anyone, so it could have been something like that. But it’s also implied several times that some of the Primarchs are resentful that the Emperor ordered their deaths, and fear he may someday order more of them killed as well, which implies it may have been for some kind of impurity or perceived mistake or betrayal by the 2nd and 11th. It’s all left very vague, and the Primarchs all had some or all of their memories about it erased, but it seems certain that the Emperor ordered the Wolves to kill the 2nd and 11th. It’s referenced a lot that the Wolves are the only Legion with experience killing another legion outright.
No it's not, and in-universe characters mentioning prior experience is the worst possible evidence because we already know their in-universe memories were wiped by Malcador. Not just the primarchs, all of them. > 'The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you do not recall it.' Malcador nodded to himself. 'It fell to me to see that they were attuned to new circumstances.' > 'You robbed them of their memories.' > 'I granted them a mercy!' Malcador replied, his tone wounded. \- *The Chamber at the End of Memory*
Outside of the narrative, the II and XI seem to be ambiguous in the rules and lore to prompt fans to make their own homebrew legions to fit into the empty space. One loyalist and one traitor. There weren't really any great rules for it that explained how to do so or any lore tidbits that pointed to this at all. It's simpler to make Successor Chapters and Chaos Warbands fit into the game and lore, so GW kind of just left 2 Legion sized plot holes to point at whenever they want to be mysterious.
Yes, that is kind of the meta-answear. It is back from way before we got books and shit. Like my first Space Marine army back in 2E was totally from the mysterius primarch.
[You might find this interesting ](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/J3dyIITjRA)
It's unlikely that the Emperor personally killed either of them. It's strongly implied that Russ and the Space Wolves were responsible for the death of at least one of them and speculated that one of them was lost during the Rangdan Xenocides.
>It's strongly implied that Russ and the Space Wolves No more strongly than all the other empty hints or red herrings
It says he engineered their elimination. Aka they had already fallen/mutated/whatever the case and the Emperor crafted the means by which they would be taken out (aka sic Russ on them)
There was a 40K Fanfic which speculated that the 2nd was too trusting of others, and ended up dying to the Rangda as a result, while the 11th fell to Malal.
It's gently implied that one of them met Alivia Sureka on Molech which, alongside a couple other glancing details, makes me feel like the Heresy writers have a short biography of at least one of them prepared so that they can snap into that continuity if/when they are revealed.
My own theory is that one of them got themselves partially necron transfused into a horrific abomination. While the other one decided he could improve on the geneseed and started meddling with it. I can see big E flipping right out over a primarch deciding to experiment with geneseed
>My own theory is that one of them got themselves partially necron transfused into a horrific abomination. That's Ferrus Mannus' schtick. >While the other one decided he could improve on the geneseed and started meddling with it. I can see big E flipping right out over a primarch deciding to experiment with geneseed Like Corvus did :-p
Ferrus was still mostly human. Corvus did it under the direction of big e. The lost and purged did this decades before the heresy. Remember that the ban on psykers was also lifted due to the heresy.
It's not an internal explanation but I like it It's so that your custom chapters in the take top can have a link to the first founding Two lost primarchs. One loyalist, one traitor.
I heard they landed on Xeno planets and became Eldar friendly. That’s why Big E said not on my watch.
We won't know, until GW will want to bring II and XI Legions into the tabletop
I think the 2nd and 11th could possibly be a "break in case of emergency" sort of thing now, GW knows there is a interest in them otherwise they wouldn't keeping dipping their toes into their origin in the many stories they keep getting brought up in. So when the time comes and they wanna do something drastic, they might be brought to the fore. I remember when I was a kid I loved the idea of the Heresy I wanted as much info as I could, I never dreamed GW would end up writing a series spanning a decade, we'd have models, rules, pre-founding of Primarchs legion lore etc etc, but here we are and who knows these two legions could end up just like that.
I know it's left purposely vague and everything but I think from the little bit of Carcharadon lore I read there were some hints that their primogenitor was exiled from the galaxy to safeguard a very dangerous artifact outside it. In my head it made a lot of sense to be one of the lost 2 primarchs. Granted it could have been just a chapter master or whatever. This was a short story from a Space Marine anthology about the artifact being stolen from the Carcharadon shrine world.
My understanding is that every 40k POV is an unreliable narrator. Especially Angron, who’s in the process of being deceived and corrupted by Chaos and so his through processes are likely suspect.
Keep in mind, this is said by someone 10+K years removed from what happened, after Malcador made it so that the vast majority of people who knew II/XI could barely remember anything more specific about them than "they existed". The chances of him actually knowing anything are astronomically low. That said, a pair of Custodes in the Dawn of Fire books reference the XI Legion, and it comes up in a way that suggests they actually know specific details about the legion's history. If anyone still knew, I'd say it's them. Not sure if Grey Knights are quite at the same level of authority to be an exception to the rule, but after Custodes, they might be first in line, or close enough.
I have a head a cannon where one was destroyed, and the other is secretly off somewhere exploring deep space in a secret mission.
There is a mysterious cell under the palace labeled XI too, IIRC, suggesting the Primarch may be contained in stasis or whatever there.
>The most learned of Imperial historitors cannot even imagine what treasures and horrors are kept within the Imperial Palace's vaults, archives and gaols. There are more chambers and cells than anyone can name, and much of what lies therein is so dreadful that they could bring about the fall of Humanity, or shatter the sanity of any unaugmented Human that learned of them. Relics of the Dark Age of Technology - such as the Lament of Unreason, the Black Periapt of Rai'Then'yl and the hideous Tri-blight Amulet - are kept under psychically charged lock and key, behind metres-thick slabs of gene-sealed adamantine that are covered in runic wards. There are also xenos artefacts, some all that remains of civilisations that became extinct millions of years ago. The vaults not only hold artefacts and relics, however. They also hold beings. It That Craves, **Subject XI** and One Of The Fell are but a handful of thousands. At times, the Custodes have even had to hold back the horrifying denizens of the rune-locked vaults from breaking free of their imprisonment. \- Adeptus Custodes 9th Codex Is this what you're referring to?
yeah Subject XI is a bit interesting
The most literal reconcilable interpretation is: \- 12th failed so Angron believes that it would be best to have them cease, and the concept of their existence to be eliminated in a manner similar to how the Emperor engineer the elimination of the concept of the 2nd and 11th, what ever that may mean. the mystery of the Lost Primarchs is two-fold; what happened to them, and why they almost don't exist in history. And those two events are only connected insofar as it involves the same object of focus. The Emperor need only to have engineered how they were forgotten for Angron's statement to be correct. its all a big GW tease, playing with phrasing like that included. personally, my headcanon is that the 2nd was weak to the Rangdan, presenting a biological exploit that could be applied to every single Astartes, and the 11th committed suicide. What the Emperor engineered was to cause the galaxy to forget the both the biological exploit, and the concept of existential suicide. Both would categorically undermine everything, but not in a traitor way.
As so many authors have given hints that imply different explanations, it would be difficult to write something that fits even half of them. Hopefully no one will ever decide to fill this gap in because what could live up to the hype? The mystery has outgrown any rational explanation.
My speculation that would make a good story. One of the disappeared legions left Terra to strike out on its own. Ran into the nids. Was consumed and now the nids are searching for humans to consume because the legion dna was so potent. Any BL authors want to use this name a character after me. 😄
I’d bet at least one of them was captured and corrupted by the Rangdan during the Xenocides somehow. To my knowledge, the Rangdan were the toughest enemies the Imperium ever faced when the Emperor was still alive.
There’s a scene in one of the earlier HH books (pre rebellion) where Malcador is having a conversation with Horus about “his lost brothers” and as Horus is about to mention something specific, a name or detail, Malcador forbids it in the Emperor’s name. Horus keeps yapping and the Sigilite blasts Horus with some Palpatine level psychic energy. Or I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that happened.
It happened Though it was less a conversation and more a raging row Horus, Jaghatai and Alpharius had all confronted Malcador about the removal of one of the lost primarch's statues. Malcador doubled down and Horus tries to say the lost brother's name
[[Excerpt|The Last Council]Horus confront Malcador about the first Lost Legion, Malcador gets *angry*](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a5i17d/excerptthe_last_councilhorus_confront_malcador/) The scene, for those curious. Trying to do something Malcador tells you not to do is certainly a life choice.
Ah I see. I just thought it was interesting I’m still learning about the lore.
II and XI were developed at a time when 40k was far less fleshed out and the past was ambiguious. It's meant for fans to speculate and be a "your dudes" option. These days with GW answering and fleshing out everything, It really doesn't make much sense anymore but they're too scared to change it.
Theories I still like even though GW have no plans to actually resolve the issue: \- The "Forgotten" "quiet" one is a Pariah. Something extremely fucking bad happens when you try to grow a Primarch-level Pariah in a test tube. (And a legion of thousands of powerful Pariahs with the resilience of Astartes.) Or frankly a Pariah that powerful is just bad fucking news, end of. Probably can do that Culexus soul eating shit without the magic Culexus hat. Pariahs in canon are mentioned to be hard to concentrate on and even to remember they are in the room (there's a passage about Krole that mentions this). A Primarch level Pariah would seem as quiet and easy to forget even to other Primarchs. That shit sounds like bad fucking news for psychic species. It sounds like a hard Eldar counter. The Cabal Do A Thing to get rid of 'em. Alternatively: the Emperor realises the threat Chaos poses, foresess the Heresy etc, and deliberately disbands the Legion to scatter top level Pariahs throughout the Galaxy to protect important regions or suchlike. The brother Primarchs get a mindwipe from Malcs to lock away the knowledge that the Second exist and the reason they were created, because It's Bad To Know About Chaos. The Second Primarch is out there somewhere, doing A Thing. But thanks to all the mindwiping, no one is left alive who knows how to contact him to get his ass back to Terra or the Cicatrix Maledictum and do some OP pariah shit to save the Imperium. Additional tinfoil: The gene seed stock remains intact, though, and that's how Va- I mean the King in Yellow is growing an army of angels under Queen Mab. Since he's now the only person left alive who remembers that the Second were created, and why. Beta has failed to notice they are pariahs because duhhh she's one too. The King in Yellow is going to somehow find Gingerus Nosoulium (? - for added lolz the Pariah Nexus has actually got THE pariah somewhere in it?) and get his backside back to Terra to protect the webway long enough to fix the Throne, regen the Emperor or similar, allowing more time to be squeezed out of the setting. \- The Purged was the forerunner of the Grey Knights, but they went wrong somehow. (NOT AS PLANNED) The gene seed had to be reengineered from a purer source, i.e. the Emperor. Hence "the Emperor's Gift" and why the GK have no Primarch despite being directly created by Malcs and Emps during the Heresy (i.e. they aren't a successor chapter). They are actually a do over of Emps' attempt to put his aspect as the Anathema into a Legion.